


sing of peace in this valley deep

by captainkilly



Series: form & void [2]
Category: Band of Brothers (TV 2001)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, Gen, being newly god-chosen is a pain, gods walk the earth and exact their influence on people, oh look it's everyone's favorite OC from TLBD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-27
Updated: 2020-09-27
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:56:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26678593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainkilly/pseuds/captainkilly
Summary: In Belgium, the choices some gods make weigh heavy on their chosen. They leave one nurse to pick up the pieces.
Series: form & void [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1918033
Comments: 4
Kudos: 9





	sing of peace in this valley deep

**Author's Note:**

> This likely will not make too much sense if you have not read the first part of this series. There are mentions of canon characters in this one, though most will not click as such until after you've read that. This little fic counts as a side-leap from chapter 6 of TLBD. 
> 
> As for the female OC goodness, I fully accept responsibility but wish to thank [MercuryGray](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MercuryGray/pseuds/MercuryGray) and the BoB Discord server for the endless encouragement!

* * *

“Clear the tent!”

“B-but th–”

“Clear it.” She doesn’t raise her voice. Doesn’t roar the warning, though she’s sure it is lodged somewhere in the sharpness of the syllables. “Take the quiet one and make sure Doc Keller sees him. I’ll deal with this one.”

_This one_ is younger than she expected. Dark hair, dark eyes, and drunk on fear. His voice hasn’t yet given way to hoarseness, though his screams pitch into that rasping note and then fade with every breath again. Blood trickles out of his nose at a steady pace. It paints his mouth brightest red, streams out upon the soldier’s honeyed skin, pours onto the angry slashes of burnt orange that she recognizes as god-markings.

“That’s a really bad run,” she murmurs, taking in the slant and curve of the traces his god left upon him. “One of the worst so far.”

“You sure you’re going to be all right with him, Rachel?”

She smiles at Althea, whose frown deepens with every noise and whimper that ensues from the soldier. Waves her hand at the tent’s opening and makes sure she nods in reassurance at the four men who brought him in. The fifth man seems to be trapped in a daze, as his eyes remain unfocused, but there’s nothing she can do for one newly chosen by Balance. Balance sorts itself out, or it does not. She shrugs. Gestures.

“I’ll be fine,” she replies as she sets down her cup of tea. “This is not the first time, after all. You remember the Air Force pilot, the one that was almost feral when we pulled him from the woodlands?”

Althea shoots her a wary look. “You’re not reassuring me in the slightest.”

“He’ll scream less or not at all once you are all out of the tent,” she replies, raising an eyebrow and tilting her chin up in that stubborn set she has perfected by now. “Go on.”

It is a testament to the state of this war that none dare argue further. The men take their leave one at a time, shooting troubled glances at the man they are leaving behind, and never meet her eyes when they do. Althea wraps her arm around the Balance-chosen – Malarkey, wasn’t that his name? – before the man can stumble out of the tent. They have seen too many god-chosen land themselves in field hospitals like this one. They may be winning the war on all other fronts, but sometimes it feels they are losing the last remnants of sanity along with it.

Rachel heaves a small sigh as she stares at the soldier who is now huddled against the tent wall furthest away from her. Newly chosen are the worst. She prefers the old guard, like that Airborne lieutenant who carried War’s markings proudly and still laughed at all her bad jokes, or like that Love-chosen idiot who’d flirted with all the nurses and had then flushed brightest red when one of his fellow soldiers came to see him. She _likes_ the old guard, whose bonds with their gods are firm and unshaken in the face of violence.

She’s not at all sure what to make of new ones like this.

“Hello,” she says, and steps just a little closer. “My name is Rachel. You’re in the field hospital just outside your camp, sweetheart.” The endearment rolls off her tongue with ease once the soldier’s dark eyes fix upon her face and his screams fade into silence at last. “They brought you in about an hour ago. Said you’d been working some intelligence job, but they didn’t want to say more than that.” Her mouth curves downward in disapproval. “Anything you can tell me about that would be grand, because I have no idea where to even start.”

“W-why are you quiet?” he whispers back immediately. Demand laces itself into his voice, even as some of its lilt gives way to a harsh rasp instead. “The others, they.. They were loud. Really loud.”

She blinks. _Oh._ _Oh no._

“Who chose you?” she asks, though she already fears she knows the answer. “Whose markings are those?”

His smile is grim. He wipes at his face with a shaking hand. Smears the blood out over his skin, but barely pays that any mind.

“Chaos,” he says, and hangs his head. “I said yes to Chaos.”

“Well, what the fuck did you go and do _that_ for?”

It’s out of her mouth and into the open before she can hold her incredulity back. She huffs at the thought – saying yes to Chaos, _honestly_ , as if the war wasn’t already complex enough – and turns to the supply table. Grabs tranquilizers doctors last gave the War-chosen, rummages between the supplies until her hand clenches around a bottle of bright blue suppressants, and flings one of the spare blankets over her shoulder.

She steps toward the soldier even as he opens his mouth to spin excuses. Questioning enemy soldiers, knowing they are lying and hearing new information in everything that goes unsaid, going on some merry goose chase in someone else’s head, needing another god-chosen’s interference in pulling him back out.. She heaves a sigh as he paints her the exact picture of just how he wound up here screaming his head off and pulling a newly Balance-chosen down into the drain with him.

“Buckle up, kiddo,” she says grimly, seating herself beside him and covering both their legs with the blanket, “this is going to be a _very_ long night.”

He tilts his head toward her. “My name’s Charlie,” he says, as if that is the most important thing he needs to tell her right now. His eyes narrow. “What do you mean, this is going to be a very long night?”

“You’re going to take both of these pills,” she says, shaking a tranquilizer and a suppressant out of their bottles onto her hand, “and then you and I are going to work on how to control the consequences of your stupid decision to say ‘yes’ to a god like that.” She shakes her head. “They said you worked intelligence. Are you honestly that stupid? Did you never think to question that god of yours?”

“I did. Several times. Did you, before you said yes to yours?”

She raises an eyebrow. Can’t help but feel mildly impressed at the certainty with which he asks the question. Her being god-chosen is something that isn’t widely known, though she’s certain the people she works with most will have guessed by now. The sway her god has is like the calm in the eye of a storm, which serves her well during her work as a nurse but really doesn’t do much of anything outside of it. It’s quiet. Private. Not something she ever advertises, although most god-chosen seem to respond to her as though they know exactly who chose her. The War-chosen lieutenant had certainly laughed long and hard enough when she had appeared at his bedside.

“I questioned my god once, before I said yes.” She’s careful to keep her tone light, even when the memory itself is dark. She bites her lip as the memory of the first absence of violence shudders through her. “Asked him what he’d want with someone like me, who’d never even _known_ peace before he came. He said that was precisely why he wanted me.”

“They choose well, don’t they?” Charlie’s hand finds her knee. She surprises herself when she doesn’t recoil from the firmness of his touch. “I can’t read you very well at all. There’s no chaos in that head of yours that I can use. It’s nice, you know?” His smile is toothy and more carefree than a Chaos-chosen’s smile has got any right to be. “Me, I’ve always been prone to getting myself into all sorts of trouble. I suppose this is just another, what did you call it, stupid decision?”

Rachel hums her agreement. Decides that she may like this newly god-chosen soldier after all when his hand never strays higher than her knee and his words remain vaguely self-deprecating throughout his speech. He’s young, this one, probably fresh out of high school and enlisted because he wanted to see the world more than he wanted to fight. There’s a flash of brightness in his gaze that almost makes her reconsider calling him stupid.

His other hand grazes her palm as he lifts the pills from her hand and swallows them dry. His head rocks back almost immediately. She grabs his hand in a reflex, as if this can somehow anchor him further. Blue lines spill onto his skin from his mouth and throat, wind around his cheeks and neck like the thin vines that loop around the porch of her home, reach all the way up to his dark eyes and mingle with the myriad orange lines that his god left upon him. He whimpers and gasps against the strain that she knows will curl around his thoughts and presence. It’s captivity of the worst kind, or so she thinks, but until he has learned control..

“Easy, sweetheart,” she says, and closes her eyes. She inhales. When she breathes out, her god is with her. In her. She feels him blossom within her touch as she interlaces her fingers with Charlie’s. She inhales again. Smiles when her skin begins to hum and her mind turns wholly tranquil. “I’m with you. You’re going to be just fine. You’re going to be okay.” She exhales the last of the sharp breaths that remind of conflict. She is one with the eye of the storm. Chaos has no dominion over her. “Charlie, I’m going to need you to listen to my voice.”

Rachel speaks of home, of the wilderness that creeps up to her home when she isn’t looking, of the long hours spent out in the cornfields. She speaks of watching dusk settle across the land with impunity, as though it has more claim over it than she. She speaks of sunrise, of nights when the lake gleams with moonlight and the temptation to swim becomes overwhelming, of the times when she revisits one of the five books her family owns and delights in the words all over again. Her voice sing-songs into the French that her grandmother used to whisper, into the Spanish her cousins grew up coaxing out of their new neighbors, into the stray Italian she learned from that Air Force pilot who saw Light burst into stars all around him during a midnight flight. She speaks in several languages and knows she has forgotten more words than some will ever learn in this life.

Charlie’s head finally drops onto her shoulder as his breathing slows and his whimpers fade from his lips. She knows he is still awake, as the pills don’t invite an easy slumber, but the rise and fall of the tides Chaos dances upon has faded from his lungs. In the morning, she will seek out the Wisdom-chosen intelligence officer who never speaks down to her the way some of the other officers do. She’ll speak with him about Charlie and pray he hears her.

“Rachel?”

“Yes?”

“Do you think I can stay a little while longer?”

“You can stay as long as you want,” she decides. Peace flows forth from her as she rests her cheek against Charlie’s hair. “I promise, okay?”

The whispered _thank you_ makes her smile.


End file.
